Condemned Homes Tumble

Developer To Build On Smithfield Sites

November 27, 1991|By LESLIE POSTAL Daily Press

SMITHFIELD — Twenty-three condemned houses in Jersey Park that town officials have lobbied to have demolished and replaced are being torn down this week. A developer plans to erect new homes in their place.

Michael Wise, president of Tidewater Land Corp., purchased the Herbert C. Nelms subdivision on East Avenue last month, and workers began razing the dilapidated houses Tuesday. If all goes well, 17 single-family houses priced at about $60,000 each should be ready for occupancy by the end of next summer, Wise said.

``I'm very pleased about this. I think it's going to be a very nice community,'' said Mayor James B. Chapman, whose Pretlow & Chapman Funeral Home is just a block from the rundown houses.

Many of the houses, declared unsafe in 1988 and condemned in 1990, have been vacant for the last several years, their windows broken, porches sagging and tiny yards littered with trash. Residents living nearby have complained about the state of the houses.

``They were ragged. It was kinda frightening even looking at them,'' said Mary Gray, who lives one block over on Middle Street. ``They bring the value of my property down,'' Gray said.

``I'm very pleased, very pleased,'' she said of work that started Tuesday.

In August, Smithfield Town Council voted to demolish the buildings. At that point, more than a year had passed since the council condemned the buildings, and still no one had come forward with plans to renovate or replace them. By then, town officials said the houses were too run down to be repaired.

But the demolition plans were put on hold when Wise indicated he was interested in purchasing the property and building new houses on the lots.

Wise bought the property for $92,500 from Barbara Nelms, according to county court records.

``This neighborhood is a nice little neighborhood,'' Wise said, pointing to the houses on nearby streets. ``This has been a scourge.''

The new houses will be sold for $58,000 to $62,000 through a program run by the Virginia Housing Development Authority, which waives a down payment and provides a low mortgage rate for low-income buyers, Wise said.

``People should have decent housing,'' he said. ``If you give people something nice, they'll keep it nice.''

The 1,200-to-1,400 square foot houses will have three bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, dining room and living room, he said.

All but one of the old houses were empty Tuesday, and the last tenant was moving out even as a bulldozer razed nearby buildings. The woman could not be reached for comment, but Chapman said he had spoken with some of her friends and had been told she had a new place to live.

The Nelms subdivision was built about 30 years ago using World War II-era houses from Newport News, Chapman said. The houses were taken apart, shipped to Smithfield and reassembled.

By the late 1970s, the subdivision's houses, which were rented, had fallen into disrepair. Most of the buildings were condemned in 1990, when building inspectors found leaking roofs, rotting floors and no indoor plumbing.

At the time, Nelms blamed her tenants for some of the problems, saying they ruined whatever improvements she made.